In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.
Daucus is a worldwide genus of herbaceous plants of the celery family Apiaceae of which the best-known species is the cultivated carrot. Daucus has about 75 species. The oldest carrot fossil is 1.3 Ma, and was found on the island of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean.
Carlina is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. It is distributed from Madeira and the Canary Islands across Europe and northern Africa to Siberia and northwestern China.
Mentha aquatica is a perennial flowering plant in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It grows in moist places and is native to much of Europe, northwest Africa and southwest Asia.
Brassica oleracea is a plant of the family Brassicaceae, also known as wild cabbage in its uncultivated form. The species evidently originated from feral populations of related plants in the Eastern Mediterranean, where it was most likely first cultivated. It has many common cultivars used as vegetables, including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan.
Onopordum, or cottonthistle, is a genus of plants in the tribe Cardueae within the family Asteraceae. They are native to southern Europe, northern Africa, the Canary Islands, the Caucasus, and southwest and central Asia. They grow on disturbed land, roadsides, arable land and pastures.
Chamaerops is a genus of flowering plants in the family Arecaceae. It contains only one species, Chamaerops humilis, variously called European fan palm or the Mediterranean dwarf palm. It is one of the most cold-hardy palms and is used in landscaping in temperate climates.
Juniperus phoenicea, the Phoenicean juniper or Arâr, is a juniper found throughout the Mediterranean region.
Aconitum napellus, monkshood, aconite, Venus' chariot or wolfsbane, is a species of highly toxic flowering plants in the genus Aconitum of the family Ranunculaceae, native and endemic to western and central Europe. It is an herbaceous perennial plant growing to 1 m tall, with hairless stems and leaves. The leaves are rounded, 5–10 cm (2.0–3.9 in) diameter, palmately divided into five to seven deeply lobed segments. The flowers are dark purple to bluish-purple, narrow oblong helmet-shaped, 1–2 cm (0.39–0.79 in) tall. Plants native to Asia and North America formerly listed as A. napellus are now regarded as separate species. The plant is extremely poisonous in both ingestion and body contact. It is the most poisonous plant in all of Europe.
Kaempferia galanga, commonly known as kencur, aromatic ginger, sand ginger, cutcherry, is a monocotyledonous plant in the ginger family, and one of four plants called galangal. It is found primarily in open areas in Indonesia, southern China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and India, but is also widely cultivated throughout Southeast Asia.
The common chameleon or Mediterranean chameleon is a species of chameleon native to the Mediterranean Basin and parts surrounding the Red Sea. It is the only extant species of Chamaleonidae with a range that naturally extends into Europe.
Cistus monspeliensis is a species of rockrose known by the common name Montpellier cistus or narrow-leaved cistus. It is native to southern Europe and northern Africa, in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecosystems of matorral—maquis shrublands.
Conium maculatum, known as hemlock or poison hemlock, is a highly poisonous flowering plant in the carrot family Apiaceae, native to Europe and North Africa. It is herbaceous without woody parts and has a biennial lifecycle. A hardy plant capable of living in a variety of environments, hemlock is widely naturalised in locations outside its native range, such as parts of Australia, West Asia, and North and South America, to which it has been introduced. It is capable of spreading and thereby becoming an invasive weed.
Cynomorium is a genus of parasitic perennial flowering plants in the family Cynomoriaceae. The genus consists of only one species, Cynomorium coccineum. Its placement in the Saxifragales was resolved in 2016 with the help of nuclear, plastid, and mitochondrial sequences obtained from next-generation sequencing. Common names include the misleading Maltese fungus or Maltese mushroom; also desert thumb, red thumb, tarthuth (Bedouin) and suoyang (Chinese). A rare or local species, it grows in dry, rocky or sandy soils, often in salt marshes or other saline habitats close to the coast. It has had a wide variety of uses in European, Arabian and Chinese herbal medicine.
Saccharum officinarum is a large, strong-growing species of grass in the sugarcane genus. Its stout stalks are rich in sucrose, a disaccharide sugar which accumulates in the stalk internodes. It originated in New Guinea, and is now cultivated in tropical and subtropical countries worldwide for the production of sugar, ethanol and other products.
Atractyloside (ATR) is a natural, toxic glycoside present in numerous plant species worldwide in the daisy family including Atractylis gummifera and Callilepis laureola, and it's used for a variety of therapeutic, religious, and toxic purposes. Exposure to ATR via ingestion or physical contact is toxic and can be fatal for both humans and animals, especially by kidney and liver failure. ATR acts as an effective ADP/ATP translocase inhibitor which eventually halts ADP and ATP exchange and the cell dies due to lack of energy. Historically, atractyloside poisoning has been challenging to verify and quantify toxicologically, though recent literature has described such methods within acceptable standards of forensic science.
Carboxyatractyloside (CATR) is a highly toxic diterpene glycoside that inhibits the ADP/ATP translocase. It is about 10 times more potent than its analog atractyloside. While atractyloside is effective in the inhibition of oxidative phosphorylation, carboxyatractyloside is considered to be more effective. The effects of carboxyatractyloside on the ADP/ATP translocase are not reversed by increasing the concentration of adenine nucleotides, unlike its counterpart atractyloside. Carboxyatractyloside behavior resembles bongkrekic acid while in the mitochondria. Carboxyatractyloside is poisonous to humans as well as livestock, including cows and horses.
Aristolochia paucinervis is a herbaceous plant in the family Aristolochiaceae endemic to the western Mediterranean Basin.
Mentha gattefossei is a plant species in the genus Mentha, endemic to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. It was first described by French botanist René Maire in 1922. Harvested for its essential oil, M. gattefossei has seen use in traditional medicine, pest control and as a food seasoning.
